Abie Ames

Abie "Boogaloo" Ames (born May 23, 1918 at the Big Egypt Plantation in Cruger , Mississippi , according to other sources May 6 in Athens , Georgia ; † February 4, 2002 in Greenville , Mississippi) was an American jazz, Blues and boogie woogie pianist.

Ames began playing the piano at the age of five. As a teenager, he moved to Detroit , where swing and boogie-woogie were the most popular styles of music. Having a good memory for melodies, he learned to play the hits of the day very easily. In the late 1940s he had his own band with whom he performed in Detroit and the northern cities. He also played with blues musicians who performed in Detroit. Ames Haus became a meeting place for local and traveling musicians, including Nat King Cole and Erroll Garner .

In the early 1960s, Ames was a session musician on Barry Gordy's newly formed Motown label, the new sound supplanted the Detroit jazz scene, and Ames married and moved to Carrollton , Mississippi with his wife Gracie . He took a job as a piano tuner with the Baldwin Piano Company and reached new audiences in the years that followed, playing for the predominantly white, affluent audience in Mississippi. He appeared as a soloist or with a band. During the blues revival of the 1970s, he returned from jazz to the blues. During this decade he appeared regularly at blues festivals, including the renowned Chicago Blues Festival .

In the course of his life he taught many students, including the famous pianist Mulgrew Miller . After his wife's death in the early 1980s, he moved to Greenville, where he began working with Eden Brent which lasted the rest of his life. Together they toured the country and performed in major cities such as New York , Philadelphia and Washington, DC . Their collaboration was the subject of the documentary Boogaloo & Eden: Sustaining the Sound and shortly before his death, the film Forty Days in the Delta was made for South African television.

Boogaloo Ames died on February 4, 2002 and is buried in Lakewood Cemetery .

Discography

• Boogaloo's Boogie (posthumous 2007)
• 2002 Belly of the Sun Duet with Cassandra Wilson "Darkness on the Delta"
• Pinetops Boogie Woogie and After Hours for the 1999 "From Mississippi to Chicago"

Awards

Especially towards the end of his life he was often awarded. Among the awards were:

• Greenville Arts Council Lifetime Achievement
• Mississippi Arts Commission Artist Fellowship
• Mississippi Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts